


don't close your eyes, it'll all be okay

by automatronic



Category: Blaseball (Video Game)
Genre: Angst, Canonical Character Death, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Sleep Deprivation, aftermath of the blaseballidays stream, canonical character triple death, discussion of incineration, ghost buds having a chit chat, language degredation, null team, rated T for discussions of death but there's no swearing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-26
Updated: 2021-01-26
Packaged: 2021-03-18 16:42:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,197
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28995417
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/automatronic/pseuds/automatronic
Summary: Stevenson doesn’t expect to find Sebastian in the Hall. In all honesty, they’d given up looking for him awhile ago, resorting to wandering aimlessly. If someone truly didn’t want to be found down here, there was nothing they could do about it.or, Monstera, Telephone, and the aftermath of a dream
Relationships: Sebastian Telephone & Stevenson Monstera
Comments: 11
Kudos: 14





	don't close your eyes, it'll all be okay

**Author's Note:**

> The idea that dead blaseball players slowly lose their ability to talk in the Trench was thought up by the @NullTeam1 twitter account. Go follow us we have fun being ghosts there.  
> The depiction of the Hall of Flame as containing statues of all the dead players at the moment when they died, as well as Stevie's general characterization, are all the brainchildren of my friend marn.  
> title comes from the radical face song "the river with no name"  
> enjoy.

Stevenson doesn’t expect to find Sebastian in the Hall. In all honesty, they’d given up looking for him awhile ago, resorting to wandering aimlessly. If someone truly didn’t want to be found down here, there was nothing they could do about it. It was just the nature of the labyrinth that was the Trench that it eventually led them back to the Hall.

Sebastian is sitting on the floor, leaning up against the base of his own statue, legs tucked up close to his chest. Every once and awhile, his eyes slip shut and his head tilts forward ever so slightly, and then Sebastian snaps back into awakeness. He doesn't even notice Stevie as they approach. It's been a few days since… whatever had happened to him. Stevie doesn't have the full details. All they know is that all the paper in the Trench had started writing on itself a play-by-play of a game in thick, black ink, before every radio had started broadcasting the same game. Stevie had dropped their makeshift sketchbook and taken cover rather than listen to the game, but they knew that _something_ had happened to Moody Cookbook and Sebastian, and that neither of them were willing, or able, to talk about it.

They’d heard murmurings that it was some kind of dream, and that Moody and Sebastian had carried instability into it, and that they’d died again in the dream. Moody and the remaining Tigers had retreated to some corner to recover. Meanwhile, Sebastian had insisted that he was fine, and then stopped talking to anyone and ran off into the depths of the Trench just to prove how fine he was.

Stevenson was his friend, or at least Sebastian had said that they were friends, and they were worried, and they didn’t want him to be alone. Maybe it was selfish that they weren’t giving Sebastian the space he thought he wanted, and they were just tracking him down so that they could feel like they’d done something helpful. But still, they’re here, and they’re going to do what they can. Stevie inhales.

“Hey,” they say. Nothing they say ever comes out as more than a whisper anymore, but their voice still carries across the damp marble floors of the Hall. Sebastian doesn’t jump as the sound the way he normally does, instead turning to Stevie and blinking his glowing eyes at them slowly, before humming at them in response.

They struggle to figure out what to say that won’t make Seb start insisting that he’s fine, before settling on a simple “Is it ok if I sit here?”

Sebastian responds with a quick nod, and Stevie sits down across from him, taking care to fold their abnormally long arms and legs in a way that leaves Seb with plenty of personal space.

Sebastian reaches over to his side, pulling out a small notepad and pen. Stevie could understand him if he beeped at him in Morse or T9, but they get it. Sometimes you don’t want to have to hear the way that being down here has changed you.

“ _y r u here?”_ he writes in messy, uneven letters. By now Stevie knows not to read an accusatory tone into the question; Seb is always more blunt when he has to write out what he wants to say.

Stevie takes a moment to try and figure out how to answer, before settling on the truth. “Was worried about you.”

Seb lets out a series of low-frequency noises that resemble a mumble, and jots something down on his notepad aggressively.

 _“Im finɘ”_ it reads, with the word fine shakily underlined twice for emphasis. He all but shoves the notepad towards Stevie, as if that will get the point across better. 

“You wrote that ‘e’ is backwards, Seb,” they respond, looking from the notepad back to him.

Seb scowls at them and pulls the notepad back to his chest, squinting at the words on the page. His pen scratches against the paper rapidly as he becomes engrossed in whatever he’s writing. 

Stevie takes the moment to actually look at Sebastian. They don’t have it in them to say it out loud, but he looks awful. His greasy hair is sticking up at odd angles, and what looks like ash is streaked across his face. The violent buzz of instability is still hanging around him, as loud as it was when he first arrived. He smells like burnt polyester.

Sebastian flips the notepad around and hands it to Stevenson. 

“ _ɘ e ɘe ee ɘɘ_ _both look wrong now”_

Stevie can’t help but laugh in response. Sebastian pouts and smacks them with the notepad, but in his state, he couldn’t put force behind it even if he wanted to. His face softens into a tired smile, and relaxes a bit out of the ball he’s curled himself up into.

After a pause, they ask, "Why are _you_ here?"

Seb's brow furrows again as he returns to the notepad. He writes something, frantic and shaking, and then crosses it out with several aggressive strokes.

When he finally turns the notepad back to Stevie, the only words that are legible are " _cant sleep_."

"You’ve got insomnia, and you came… here?" Stevie says with a nervous laugh.

Sebastian shakes his head and writes something on the notepad. When he flips it around, the only addition is a circle around the word _cant_. Stevie looks at the notepad, then back to Sebastian, and the bags under his eyes, and the way his hands are shaking ever so slightly, and the sickeningly empty look on his face, and it clicks.

"Seb, when was the last time you slept?" they ask.

Sebastian opens his mouth like he's going to speak, but then closes it, eyes dimming ever so slightly. He circles the _cant_ on his notepad again instead, then turns to look away from Stevie.

Stevie wishes that someone more useful than them had found Seb first. Kirby always had the right paternal demeanor for these kinds of things, and he wasn't even a Steak anymore. Even Zi, with her emotional intelligence of a fancy hamster, would've at least been able to do a fun circus trick to cheer Seb up. They didn't have anything. They had less than nothing, really, because they’d probably only made Sebastian more uncomfortable, and now they can’t leave without making him feel even worse.

But they _are_ the one who found Seb first, and they had to do something. They turn to follow Sebastian’s gaze, landing on some shining and damp tile in the corner of the room. 

“So you came here to try and stay awake?” It’s an awkward question, and they know it, but they can’t think of anything better to say.

Sebastian turns back to him slowly and blinks, as if waking up from a trance. When several long moments pass without him answering, they realize that their question probably didn’t even register to him. Stevie gently reaches for the pen and notepad, pausing to wait before Seb nods and hands them over. They re-write the question on the notepad, then hand it back to Sebastian. They like to think that maybe it helps, if they’re not making people strain to hear their voice. If they both have to communicate the same way, with the same limits.

He nods, then reaches out towards them. Stevie is more than a little scared, before they realize that Seb is just asking for the pen back. They hand it over, and he writes, “ _thought the cold would keep me awake.”_

They almost want to laugh at that. Only Sebastian would find a way to see the Hall of Flame, in all its sterile majesty, as safer than his own room.

Sebastian must sense what they’re thinking, because he returns to the notepad and writes, “ _when I sleep I see it again.”_ He then moves his pen up the page and circles “ _cant sleep”_ again.

They don’t have to ask what _it_ is. They understand, on some level. They have nightmares too, nightmares where they can feel the fire dancing up their skin and smell their own hair burning and hear a distant sound that must be their own screaming and---they get it. They know what that’s like.

But their dreams have never _actually_ killed them, and they’ve never been broadcasted to the entire Trench for everyone to see.

Stevie takes the notepad back. They feel a bit like a kid in a class, passing notes back and forth. They write, “ _So you’re just gonna never sleep again?”_ it’s too confrontational, but they’ve already handed the notepad back before they’ve fully processed what a mistake they’ve made. They let out a “Sorry” that’s barely louder than a squeak.

Sebastian glares at the page, then holds it further away from himself. He squints at them, then back at the notepad, and in the back of their mind Stevie remembers hearing Sebastian lament that his reading glasses didn’t get incinerated with him. 

Sebastian doesn’t look mad at him, though, just defeated. He sighs, then scrawls something on the notepad.

“ _I just cant handle any more”_

“ _Maybe you won’t have to,_ ” they write back in bigger letters this time, and then realize that that was probably the wrong thing to say, too.

Seb’s hands are shaking more when he hands the notepad back. They look down and read “ _I dont think it will ever stop,”_ written in barely legible letters. Sebastian isn’t looking at them anymore, electing to return to staring at the tile instead. He presses the heels of his palms into his eyes and stifles a sniffle. Guilt pools in Stevie’s gut. All they’ve done so far is made Seb cry.

They stare at the notepad, trying to actually think about what they write before they mess things up any further. They want to tell Seb that it will be okay, but they don’t know that, and they can’t promise it. They can’t get rid of the instability that looms over him and they can’t get him out of the Trench, and he certainly can’t spare Sebastian from whatever entity that’s made it so that not even his dreams are safe. 

Distantly, Stevie realizes that they’ve worked _themself_ up into a panic about all the things they can’t do. They inhale, set the pen and notepad aside, and focus on what they can do instead. They scoot forward, rearranging their arms and legs, and pull Sebastian into a hug.

He barely even tenses up, just wraps his arms around Stevie and buries his head in their chest. They can feel him shuddering, and there’s the soft sound of static cutting in and out that they presume is the only way the Trench lets him sob.

“Shh,” they murmur, “it’s okay. I mean, it sucks, but it’s okay to cry about it, I mean…” they continue to mumble, trailing off. Soon the only sound is the steady, incessant drip of water and Sebastian’s strained, mechanical noises echoing around the Hall.

After awhile, a long while, Sebastian pulls away from them. 

_"S-O-R-R-Y,"_ he beeps out in Morse.

“Seb, it’s fine,” they try to reassure him. Sebastian sniffles again, pulling his faded blue Hall Stars jersey up by the collar to wipe his face. He doesn’t look reassured. 

Stevie scoots away from him to give him personal space. “Do you wanna, uh, stay here? We could go somewhere more comfortable” they ask

Seb gives him a look that's somewhere being weary and acusatory.

“I’m not gonna make you sleep!” they respond, their alarm almost making their voice rise above the volume of a whisper. “We could just. Sit on something that isn’t a wet marble floor.”

Seb lets out a short tone that they’ve come to interpret as a laugh. His eyes are still red with tears, but he’s got a small smile on his face, and Stevie will count that as a success.

They stand up, then extend a long arm to Sebastian. He takes it, stumbling slightly after they pull him to his feet. 

“I have a couch in my room. And I’ve been working on some new songs, if you wanna hear them.” Sebastian is one of the few people who aren’t his brother who actually cares about his music. His eyes light up, literally, at the prospect, and he nods his head eagerly.

When they get back to his room, Sebastian all but collapses on his couch. Stevie plays a few songs for him, and gets back critique with the incoherency that only someone who’s been awake for days on end can muster. It’s all genuine, even if it makes no sense at all, and it works as a distraction, which is all they could really ask for.

Eventually, Sebastian actually does pass out on his couch. Stevie grabs him a blanket, and as they drape it over him they hear him mumbling, half asleep but still letting out soft dots and dash tones. They’re worried that he’s just gone right back into his nightmare, but his face looks calm. They take a moment to actually process what he said, and smile.

_“T-H-A-N-K-S/S-T-E-V-I-E”_


End file.
